About Apollo AgricultureApollo Agriculture is a tech-enabled commercial farming platform that helps small-scale farmers maximize their profits. We provide optimized financing, high-quality farm products, and digital advice. Our mission is to ensure that small-scale farmers can unlock the economic value of their land, and in turn, boost their incomes while feeding a growing continent.Apollo Agriculture has emerged as Africa’s leading agricultural fintech, growing our revenue 10x since our Series A. We now have our capable teams spread across our offices in Nairobi, Amsterdam, Lusaka, and Bangalore, and are helping our farmers increase their profitability 2-3x. Having recently closed our $40M Series B financing, we are focused on expanding geographically, enhancing our products and technology, and continuing to build our world-class team.
About the RoleApollo is seeking a Sales Manager based in Lusaka, that is comfortable with field visits. The role will focus on developing and executing sales strategies in the assigned area, management of the sales org, and guiding the team to meet the set targets. As Apollo's Sales Manager, you will be responsible for the District sales officers, field agents, and also the call center team supporting Apollo's agents. The role will be responsible for setting direction, planning and leading successful execution. You will work closely with the Commercial Lead and the Country Head in formulating sales strategies and leading the execution of these strategies with excellence.
Management: The role reports to the Country Commercial Lead.
Number of open positions: One (1)
Responsibilities:
- Commercial leadership. Develop and own sales strategy for the assigned area, with the guidance of the Commercial Lead and Country Head, being responsible for the achievement of targets and KPIs. Foster a deep understanding of our customers, to support formulating region-specific sales strategies to ensure the achievement of targets.
- Agent network management. Work with the team to attract and evaluate strong candidates. Ensure high-quality training and continuous development of the agent network, with the aim of maintaining strong sales performance.
- Team resourcing. Recruit, train, and provide performance management for the Field Sales team supporting agent activities. Build, manage, and motivate a regional team that supports Apollo’s growth goals, maintaining excellent performance at every level.
- Sales budget. Own and manage the sales budget for the assigned wards to ensure adherence to budgets, cost-effectiveness, and optimized utilization.
- System and process optimization. Combine quantitative and qualitative insights to design processes and systems that will support scale across recruitment, training, and performance management of our agent network. Implement and maintain these systems and processes to a high standard of quality across every step, to support the delivery of sales targets and agent productivity.
- Insights generation. Develop a deep understanding of farmers in your region, to be able to continuously generate insights, identify gaps and opportunities, recommend product changes, and inform regional strategy.
Requirements:
- Have 5+ years experience in sales and marketing in the rural environment, ideally with a focus on supporting and facilitating sales teams to succeed
- Excellent communicator with well-developed interpersonal skills to relate with, guide, and motivate field agents, and deliver continuous training throughout seasons
- Have an understanding of field agent sales performance metrics and how to influence their outcome by working directly with agents to encourage or correct Sales approaches
- Have the drive to understand and build relationships with customers in your region, collecting insights and feedback that will drive sales strategy and agent training
- Highly organized with strong execution, prioritization, and collaboration skills.
- Have a working knowledge of platforms needed to deliver on responsibilities - Google Drive, Google Sheets/Excel, Google Slides/PowerPoint, etc.
- Be able to write reports and generate insights from interviews with field agents, farmers, and other stakeholders
- Ability to strategize and also execute
- Demonstrate at least 2 years of experience in managing decentralized or field teams.
- Be a number-driven person with the ability to interpret data, formulate working strategies out of them, and execute them.
- A diploma or graduate in business-related disciplines would be ideal.
We:
- Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers.
- Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise.
- Are comfortable taking ri